Age Engage Program to Help Connect Seniors to the Internet

By Pradeep Chandrasekaran on 04/11/2012

Every one of us who is either middle aged or less probably has tried teaching senior members in our lives to use the internet and most of the time, it is a slow painstaking process. Amanda Del Balso, AdWords Account Manager at Google Cambridge has taken action to remedy this situation in Boston. After observing an Age Engage program in Dublin, she thought that the idea of equipping seniors with basic internet skills to improve their quality of life was a good fit for Boston and after recruiting the local Google Cambridge team she vetted out a pilot program. Through a partnership with Cambridge Community Television, Google Cambridge launched the Age Engage pilot program last December with 20 seniors attending the 2-hour class sessions. Since the people that attend the classes vary in what they want from the program, the Google Cambridge volunteers along with their love of the internet tailor the classes to each individual’s needs with a one-on-one training of general search and email skills.

Del Balso said that since they work on the computer all the time, the concept of taking their knowledge and applying them through Google’s values of making the internet accessible to all people in a really easy is an improvement of their quality of life in a very engaging way. For now, the inspirational Del Balso and co will be focusing on improving the in-class experience for its current students and will continue to look for ways to make it better. Over the coming months, the group of Google Cambridge ‘tutors’ can look forward to having 250 local seniors to train up before this year is up. If you know anyone in Boston who might be interested in joining this program, do contact them at googleinthehub@google.com.